Futurist and keynote speaker – Future of work

As a futurist and keynote speaker who specializes in the world of work and organizations, Ross Dawson delivers presentations and strategy advice that are in high demand internationally. Numerous institutions have named him as one of the world’s top influencers on the future of work.

Keynote speaker topic – The Future of Work and Organizations

Description

The world of work is changing at an extraordinary pace, with many existing jobs being supplanted by technology, entirely new jobs springing up daily, and cheap communications meaning almost every job other than hairdressing and massage can be outsourced around the planet. The expectations of young people are dramatically different to those of their parents. Many of the most successful organizations today are responding by building highly networked and flexible structures. The opportunity for corporate leaders, strategy executives, and HR managers is to create organizations that will be relevant and highly competitive in the dynamic business world of the years to come.

Example

Ross Dawson gave the keynote for a national roadshow on the Future of Work for Kinship Digital and IBM. The slides from his keynote are below.

Dawson’s keynote was framed around the critically-important lens of the future of work to gain insights into the future of organisations. He covered:

Technology drivers. Exponential growth in processing power, bandwidth and data storage are putting unprecedented capabilities in the hands of individuals, and taking machine capabilities to levels in which they can match or transcend human capacities in many domains.

Social shifts. Increasing expectations of participation, flexibility and meaning are changing the relationship between individuals and the organisations that they work for. Demographic shifts are increasing pressures on governments and social structures, changing the relationship between workers and in particularly the elderly.

Structure. In a networked world, the structure of business and how value is created is fundamentally changing. Latent availability is emerging to be matched with latent demand, creating new markets based on bringing together diverse connections.

Work. There are two critical drivers of change in work: connectivity and machine capabilities. As we are connected almost any work can be done anywhere in the world, with richer interfaces enabling greater comfort with remote work and the ability to perform physical labour. Increased capabilities of robots and computers are matching and moving beyond those of humans in many cases, destroying jobs. There is the potential for these forces to reduce employment and polarise work opportunities. However we can also envisage and create a future of work in which job creation exceeds job destruction, and we make work increasingly human, tapping our expertise, creativity, and aptitude for relationships to create a more prosperous world.

Organisations. The Möbius strip and the Klein bottle – its three-dimensional equivalent – have only one side. The inside is the outside. This metaphor is extraordinarily apt for organisations today, where the inside and the outside need to be one. The internal values and culture must be identical to those manifested outside, the social networks externally must be merged with the internal ones, it should become irrelevant where work is performed as the formal boundaries of organisations dissolve.

Performance. We need to consider what the high-performance organisations of tomorrow will look like, given the highly challenging and fast-moving business and social environment they will be working in. I will delve into these characteristics in another post.

Leadership. There are massive challenges for society and humanity in the future of work. Yet the negative outcomes some fear are not inevitable, if we take the right actions today. Leaders of all organisations must implement ‘governance for transformation’, managing risks and uncertainties while enabling necessary dramatic changes to the organisation.

Customized to your context

Futurist and keynote speaker Ross Dawson tailors each of his speeches to the needs of the specific client and audience. Make your event engaging with a presentation by Dawson that will surprise your audience with the latest innovations shaping the future of work and organizations.